In his New Year’s letter, Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu outlined the company’s plans for the future. He spoke about being “aggressive” in pushing artificial intelligence (AI) as a key driver for both content development and publishing. Even as just a letter to employees, it’s very bold to say publicly.
Kiryu acknowledged the significant developments in AI during 2023, particularly the rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT. He believes this technology has the potential to not only reshape what Square Enix creates but also revolutionize the development process itself, including aspects like programming.
“We are also working to put organizational structures in place that will enable closer collaboration between our content development and publishing functions. Our goal is to strike a balance between a product-oriented and a market-oriented approach so that we are able to share customer views with our content development team.”
Takashi Kiryu
The company’s approach to AI implementation will be multifaceted. In the short term, Square Enix aims to leverage AI to enhance development productivity and refine marketing efforts. Long-term plans involve exploring AI’s potential for creating entirely new content forms for consumers and using the technology’s ability to drive business opportunities. These are mostly buzzwords, so we don’t actually know what they mean.
Kiryu emphasized the importance of striking a balance between product-focused and market-oriented approaches. He said to do this, they need to incorporate customer feedback into the development process through closer collaboration between content development and publishing teams. He believes AI is crucial in facilitating this communication through information sharing and market analysis.
In the letter, the president talked about strengthening Square Enix’s development and publishing capabilities, expanding collaboration within the company, and diversifying its revenue stream. There is so little actually described in his letter; it is just broad terms, but it sounds like AI will be a huge component in Square Enix’s future.
This kind of thing is never taken lightly by the community, and I suspect that if Square Enix goes too far in its use of AI, their fans will call them out. However, We’ll have to wait and see exactly how Square Enix will integrate AI into its development and publishing workflows. For now, we just have broad terms and allusions to the future.
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